A Better Use for Bond Money

Around a year ago, voters passed BVSD’s capital construction bond issue putting $576.5 million to the district’s schools. In at least two years we will receive $22 million from that bond. I know that there are many rumors and ideas for a potential use for the bond money, but let’s be real. There is a new mindfulness initiative occurring in order to reduce stress. The school doesn’t need more windows. The school doesn’t need more teachers. Even improving bathrooms isn’t necessary for the students. There is one solution to every single one of our problems.

We need slides, sloping down the hallways on continuous paths of joy and excitement.

Why slides? The advantages are simply uncountable! No one can comprehend how many amazing reasons there are to have slides in the hallway. For a start, slides would help reduce stress in the minds of students all around the school.

“This year we have an initiative that goes towards trying to reduce stress across the school and have kids learn to have balance in their life,” said teacher Amy Paa Rogers. “I think inserting slides throughout the school would definitely help.”

If it’s true that students need less stress in their lives, it would be encouraged for them to use the slides. This investment into the slides would be very much worth it, as students would use them very often, as some voiced.

“I would literally walk out to the main hallway just to use those slides,” said sophomore Lucas Kiefer.

And the demographic for the slides doesn’t just consist of the students, but also the teachers.

Student teacher Kristine Kuster said she would use the slides frequently “if I was feeling like I needed a little entertainment in my life if I’d been grading all day long.”

The slides wouldn’t be sitting around doing nothing. While investing in a window used by just a few hundred students in one specific classroom may feel like a major improvement, the slides would be a far better choice, having even tens of thousands of uses daily. But, despite the uncountable advantages to adding huge slides in the hallways, some students and staff still have voiced ridiculous concerns about the slides and potential issues involving their safety.

“If you’re running up the slides you can get really hurt and you can hurt other people,” said Kuster.

Why worry about superficial injuries though? Isn’t it more important to focus on healing the interior wounds we have obtained from the stress of school? A broken bone is healable, but the hope of having slides installed in hallways being crushed by these silly concerns cannot be simply healed. But still, other concerns about the slides included the hallways being too crowded.

“You’re installing a slide in the middle of the hallway, taking up space in the hallway. It’s already crowded anyways,” said freshman Kenyon Litt.

But a larger crowd may not be a bad thing. Bigger crowds would cause more students bumping into each other, which is good for toughening the smaller freshmen up for the scary, real world.

Slides shouldn’t just be dreams in student’s minds, but instead a reality. There is no need to worry about injuries that help toughen up the smaller students or non-life-threatening wounds when we should worry more about a life without slides in the hallways, as that is life threatening. Our student’s lives and futures depend on adding slides. If we don’t have any slides we will all have panic attacks from stress and fear, while we will survive high school with slides. Please save our lives by adding slides.